Zoom in suffciently that enough detail can be seen. The larger the scale, the more detail can be seen on the map: but conversely more maps will be required and it will take longer to create the map set. On the other hand, fewer maps will be quicker to create, but you will have less detail. You will need to choose the appropriate balance.

Use "Save Map" to save this map section.

Move to next section of map and repeat until sufficient maps saved for the whole line

Preparing the digitiser session

To use the map sessions, we will need to create an XML digitiser session. For this we need to know the minimum and maximum latitude and longitude covered by our map.

We can get the min and max from the map calibrator program: centre the map on one corner of the area needed - the coordinates are displayed in the window.

Map calibrator centred on the south east of the area of interest: co-ordinates ate 50.69079305 N, 1.81480408 W.

Hint:

you may need to change the map calibrator settings to display degrees in decimal rather than degress minutes and seconds.

For our Somerset and Dorset example, the co-ordinates are:

50.69079305 N, 1.81480408 W to 51.58774160 N, 3.14002991 W

We are going to create an XML digitiser session. This is an XML file like this:

You can download the above map set and XML file from /tutorials/sdjrmap.zip To use these maps you will need to unpack all the files in the ZIP into a suitable folder, and edit the XML file to change the folder name.